No Mangoes in the Tundra: Spatial Heterogeneity in Agricultural Productivity Analysis*

In line with the wider macro productivity literature existing studies of agricultural production largely neglect technology heterogeneity, variable time‐series properties and the potential for heterogeneous but correlated total factor productivity (TFP) across countries. Our empirical approach accommodates these difficulties and seeks to model the nature of the cross‐section dependence in a sample of 128 countries (1961–2002). Our results suggest that agro‐climatic environment drives similarity in TFP evolution across countries with heterogeneous production technology. This provides a possible explanation for the failure of technology transfer from advanced countries of the temperate ‘North’ to arid and/or equatorial developing countries of the ‘South’.     

INNOVATIONS IN PARTITIONING A SHARE OF STOCK

This paper presents a synthesis of innovations in the slicing and dicing of cash flows of a share of a firm's common stock. It begins by discussing PRIMEs and SCOREs, then Unbundled Stock Units (USUs), and finally three proposed hybrid equity options called DIVS, OWLS, and RISKS.
Decomposing a share of stock into components that can be traded separately allows investors to choose between the different investment attributes constituting the underlying share. An investor who desires only cash dividend income may buy only DIVS, and another who values capital appreciation but not current income can purchase only the residual claim.
Derivatives seem to go through a developmental process that is analogous to the biological phenomenon of natural selection and adaptation. The engines that drive this evolutionary process are changing domestic and international market conditions, international tax and regulatory arbitrage, and, of course, the financial innovators who learn from their own mistakes, and from the experience of others. These innovators continually develop new products that represent improvements over the old, if only by their ability to adhere more closely to the guidelines laid down by the regulators. The histories of PRIMEs and SCOREs, of USUs, and, most recently, of DIVS, OWLS and RISKS together provide a nice illustration of this developmental process.     

Investment in Africa's Manufacturing Sector: A Four Country Panel Data Analysis

Firm level data for the manufacturing sector in Africa, presented in this paper, shows very low levels of investment. The importance of profit effects on investment is investigated using a flexible accelerator, a specification based on the Euler equation and a simple generalisation of these specificiations. There are controls for firm fixed effects. It is shown that the profit effect is very similar for both the accelerator and Euler equation specifications. A comparison with other studies shows that, for small firms, the effect is much smaller in Africa than for other countries. Reasons for the relative insensitivity of investment to profits in African firms are suggested. For the most general specification tested there are no significant differences in the size of the profit effect across the four countries in the study.     

The Impact of a Disorderly Resolution of Global Imbalances on Global Wealth

Partly reflecting structural advantages such as liquidity and strong investor protection, foreigners have built up extremely large positions in US (as well as other dollar‐denominated) financial assets. This paper describes the impact on global wealth of an unanticipated shock to US financial markets. For every 10 per cent decline in the dollar, US equity markets, and US bond markets, total wealth losses to foreigners could amount to about 5 percentage points of foreign GDP. Four stylized facts emerge: (i) foreign countries, particularly emerging markets, are more exposed to US bonds than to US equities; (ii) over time US exposure has increased for most countries; (iii) on average, US asset holdings of developed countries and emerging markets (scaled by GDP) are very similar; and (iv) based on their reserves position alone, wealth losses of emerging market governments could on average amount to about 2¾ percentage points of their GDP.     

Structural time series analysis and modelling package: A review

This package performs specialized tasks related to specification, estimation, prediction and diagnostic checking in the context of a particular class of unobserved-components models. It is menu-driven and easy to use. Although the present (first) release suffers from a number of limitations, omissions and bugs, it is nevertheless a useful tool in the hands of a knowledgeable user.     

Fits,misfits and interactions: learning at work,job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being

The resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees' needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning demands of jobs and the learning dispositions of workers and uses them for the first time in a survey of 2,810 employees. Second, it examines how these person and job characteristics correlate with specific aspects of job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being. The results show that although learning alignment is associated with high levels of satisfaction and well‐being, not all learning misalignments are associated with the reverse.